Category: monthly

July, August, & September 2025: ASL Camp and Arroba Lengua

Gretchen McCulloch

This summer, I went to ASL camp! I spent a week at Bob Rumball Camp of the Deaf, in Parry Sound, Ontario, at their ASL Adult Immersion Summer Camp, voices off for 6 nights and 7 days! This was my first time doing any sort of language immersion camp in my various experiences learning languages, and I definitely see why people like them, I really felt liked I levelled up significantly in my signing with that much concentrated practice (and I slept very soundly in the dorm beds since my brain felt so full from learning). And I made friends and got to learn from a left-handed ASL teacher for the first time, which was helpful for me as a lefty!

Also, the Spanish-language translation of Because Internet was released. You can get Arroba Lengua — not a literal translation of the title, but Spanish Internet slangification with a similar vibe — from Piodepagina, Casadellibro, and other places Spanish-language books are sold (note that the ebook edition may be more readily available if you’re outside Europe). And for lots of juicy details about the translation process, see our Lingthusiasm bonus episode where Lauren Gawne and I interview Miguel Sánchez Ibáñez, the translator. 

More media milestones

Let’s start with the big news: The first Crash Course Linguistics video has hit a million views! If you want some fun 10 min linguistics videos to watch, here’s a great place to start.

In way smaller news, Because Internet is on one of Penguin Random House’s “credibility bookshelf” zoom backgrounds. 

And somewhere in between: Because Internet made an appearance in an episode of Words Unraveled. @efrex.bsky.social made a nice callout to my interview on Let’s Learn Everything. And Linguistic Discovery would like to remind you that the internet is encouraging, not ruining, writing. 

Lingthusiasm

We launched two new Lingthusiasm merch designs:

{Merry, marry, Mary} Holidays Whether you say them the same or differently, hope you have a joyful festive season!
The Lingthusiasm podcast logo

Lingthusiam put out six episodes, including three interviews. 

Speaking of interviews, we have more than twenty interview episodes now, and you can find them all together on our topics page, where they have their own category. We also have over 100 bonus episodes for patrons, with a few interviews there as well.

Lingcomm

It was a big few months for communicating about lingcomm. Maybe we can call that lingcommcomm? Or maybe not… 

I presented at Lingstitute 2025, the LSA summer institute, about 101 ways to communicate linguistics with a broader audience — some of which we brainstormed together in this bluesky thread.

I started a new series of interviews on the lingcomm.org blog about community collaboration linguistics projects that don’t have much of a web presence. First interview: Lingcomm IRL with Girl Scouts, an interview with Nikole Patson.

The lingcomm mailing list now has over 100 members! If you’re a lingcomm practitioner who wants to hear about lingcomm conferences, events, journal special issues, and so on, please feel free to subscribe!

Lingthusiasm cohost creator Lauren Gawne put out her yearly list of linguistics and language podcasts. Know of a good one she missed? Please let her know!  

New favorite linguistic data

Linguistics

— Gretchen McCulloch (@gretchenmcc.bsky.social) 2025-09-11T21:54:45.712Z

Miscellaneous posts

The lingthusiasm podcast logo, zoomed in to reveal many smaller pictures

This quarter’s image is a schwa and a kiki and a nondetatched rabbit part and a vowel space and a microphone and…

April, May, & June 2025: Lauren writes a gesture book!

Gretchen McCulloch

Back in 2017, when I was deep in the writing process for Because Internet, I was feeling stuck on the emoji chapter and Lauren Gawne, my cohost on the then-baby Lingthusiasm podcast (we were less than a year old!) offered to read the current draft. I’ll never forget her comment that led to me rewriting the whole chapter: “You realize this is all related to gesture, right?” 

Immediately, I wanted to dive into the gesture literature, which hadn’t been a part of either of my linguistics degrees. I asked Lauren where I should start. Was there some sort of short book or long survey article that put the rest of the literature into context so I could figure out which papers I needed to read more deeply and how they fit into relationship with each other? Lauren was like, “Read these parts of McNeill 1992, and then McNeill 2005, and then these three chapters of Kendon 2004…” — which was when I realised maybe I was going to have to solve this problem for myself. She ended up sending me her classroom slides and answering my questions herself, which led to a much-revised chapter in Because Internet and an academic paper together on emoji as gesture. 

Since then, we’ve done several Lingthusiasm episodes about various aspects of gesture, but that gap we noticed in 2017 has still been there: if someone wants a more in-depth entry point into the gesture literature, one that doesn’t assume they have any background in gesture specifically but does assume they want more details than we can fit into a podcast episode, where do they go? Especially since many people’s degrees, like mine, still don’t contain much about gesture, so a prof in linguistics, cognitive science, anthropology, and related fields might not know where to advise a student with a gesture-related project to start reading. 

That’s why Lauren has written a book! It’s called Gesture: A Slim Guide and it’s available now from Oxford University Press. The Slim Guides are part of an Oxford series in the genre known as academic crossover books: they’re much less technical than a typical academic monograph, but more in-depth than a trade book from a commercial publisher like Penguin. Here are some ways you can learn more about it: 

Events and media

I also did other things this quarter than just take credit for Lauren’s hard work! Quite a few things, in fact: three conferences…

…two guest appearances…

…and a few anniversaries:

Lingthusiasm

We had a few special lingnouncements this quarter. (Is that a word? It is now.)

You can now gift a Lingthusiasm membership to someone else. Depending on the tier you buy, this could get them access to bonus episodes and our Discord server, or even a spot with their favorite IPA character on the Lingthusiasm Supporter Wall of Fame.

We also celebrated our 100th bonus episode on Patreon. In celebration, we went back into the vault and revisited our very first bonus episode — with updated sweary commentary on Important Swearing Developments that have happened since 2017. We’ve made this extra bonus bonus version available to all patrons, free and paid, so feel free to send it to your friends!

Plus, we had a full quarter of three regular and three bonus episodes:

Posts

New favorite linguistic data

This quarter’s image is me, holding onto Lauren’s Gesture book with my own two hands (well, one hand had to hold the camera), since it exists in the real world! I hope it brings joy to students, researchers, and autodidacts! 

"Gesture: A slim guide" by Lauren Gawne, published by Oxford University Press

January, February, and March 2025: 100th Lingthusiasm episode

Gretchen McCulloch
A bag of popcorn labeled in French and English. Where the English says "No cheese cheesiness," the French says "Au fauxmage"

 In the first few months of 2025, we celebrated a podcast milestone: 100 episodes of Lingthusiasm, a podcast that’s enthusiastic about linguistics! 

To celebrate, my cohost Lauren Gawne and I did a special double-feature: our 100th episode had 100 “fun fact” reasons to be enthusiastic about linguistics (including a few from former guests) and our 101st episode finally tackles that classic “Linguistics 101” format of the micro-to-macro perspective on language. 

Plus, we made a special roundup post of 101 places to get enthusiastic about linguistics. This is your one-stop-shop if you want suggestions for other podcasts, books, videos, blogs, and other places online and offline to feed your interest in linguistics, based on whittling down over 1000 listener suggestions from the Lingthusiasm listener survey with editing assistance from Leah Velleman. Even with a hundred and one options, we’re sure there’s still a few that we’ve missed, so also feel free to tag us @lingthusiasm on social media about your favourites! 

Also, and we feel extremely enthusiastic about this, after a bonus episode mentioned crocheting a model of the vocal tract, very talented listener Melody sent us a genuine crocheted model of the vocal tract! 

And as always we put out three regular and three bonus episodes.

Publishing news from all over 

Because Internet is now translated into four languages — three that I don’t speak (which is very surreal) and one that I sorta do. My author copies of all four have now finally arrived, so here’s a photo of them all hanging out together! 

Book covers in four languages: Spanish, Chinese, Japanese, and Korean.

And the famous Bunny Paper — a.k.a. Labov 1971, on evaluating kids’ language skills (using empathy and bunnies) — is back in print in open access form! When Labov passed away, someone mentioned the existence of this once-obscure paper, and Linguistics Twitter went on a hunt for a copy. We eventually did an episode about it on Lingthusiasm. Now it’s back in print so anyone who wants can read it.

Events

I went to the Linguistic Society of America’s annual meeting, this year in Philadelphia, where I played Spot the Canadian, felt a little bit old when I met a longtime fan, and saw “rawdog” elected Word of the Year.

To rawdog: taking on life without the usual protection, preparation, or comfort. Whether it’s diving into a challenge unprepared or skipping the safety net, rawdogging is about embracing risk, stone-cold sobriety, and rolling with it.

I also appeared on a few other podcasts:

New favorite data…

…and a few excellently coined new words

Social media

This quarter’s image is a bag of popcorn proving that people in Montreal really are using “fauxmage.”

2024 Year in Review

leahvelleman

In 2024, I traveled to Europe to speak at several events, including the launch of the Spanish translation of Because Internet. I started studying American Sign Language through the Lethbridge Layton Mackay Rehabilitation Centre in Montreal — my first time in a language classroom since university and it’s been really fun! The 2024 lingcomm grants were awarded. And I collaborated with the Crash Course Linguistics team on a research article about the series.

This year the podcast and I got some fun tidbits of pop culture recognition. Lingthusiasm was featured in the New York Times’ list of 5 Podcasts for Word Nerds, and Puzzmo’s daily crossword referenced my book Because Internet.

And speaking of which, Lauren Gawne and I kept making the podcast, along with some new merch featuring rabbits and fun personality quiz. I also started working with Leah Velleman on these update posts and assorted other Lingthusiasm and behind-the-scenes projects. 

Conferences

Most of my conference attendance this year was in a big trip through Europe, where I attended: 

I also went to the centennial Linguistic Society of America annual meeting in New York City.

Writing

A Spanish translation of Because Internet was released, bringing the translations list to four, with Chinese (simplified), Japanese, and Korean. If anyone reads it in several versions and wants to tell me about the linguistic choices the translators made (especially as I don’t speak the latter three languages), feel free to nerd out with me about it on bluesky. 

In 2020-21, I was a co-writer and script consultant for a project to make 16 videos for Crash Course Linguistics, the first video of which now has over a million views! The team behind these videos has also written an academic article about our process in making them, which appeared this year (yup, that’s how academic publishing goes). It’s called Creating Inclusive Linguistics Communication: Crash Course Linguistics and appears as a chapter in Inclusion in Linguistics (full text), an open-access academic book edited by Anne H. Charity Hudley, Christine Mallinson, and Mary Bucholtz. The other articles in this book and its companion Decolonizing Linguistics are also well worth checking out if you’re on the more academic side of things. 

Interviews 

Lingthusiasm

Lingthusiasm, my podcast with Lauren Gawne, celebrated our seventh anniversary! There were some fun podcast events this year above and beyond the usual episodes. Bethany Gardiner made vowel space plots for me and my cohost Lauren, and you can see more about them and how they were made on github. We created a Highly Scientific™ ‘Which Lingthusiasm episode are you?’ quiz. We put out some new merch, including gavagai shirts, scarves, and stickers to go with our episode on a famous thought experiment about a rabbit. And while we can’t take credit for this one, you can get people gift memberships now, in case there’s a linguistics fan in your life who would like to listen to the bonus episodes.

Lingthusiasm episodes

  1. No such thing as the oldest language
  2. Connecting with oral culture
  3. What visualizing our vowels tells us about who we are
  4. Scoping out the scope of scope
  5. Brunch, gonna, and fozzle — The smooshing episode
  6. How nonbinary and binary people talk — Interview with Jacq Jones
  7. The perfectly imperfect aspect episode
  8. Lo! An undetached collection of meaning-parts!
  9. Welcome back aboard the metaphor train!
  10. OooOooh~~ our possession episode oOooOOoohh 👻
  11. Helping computers decode sentences — Interview with Emily M. Bender
  12. A politeness episode, if you please

Bonus episodes

  1. Themself, Basque ergativity cartoons, and bad swearing ideas — Deleted scenes from Kirby Conrod, Itxaso Rodriguez-Ordoñez, and Jo Walton and Ada Palmer
  2. Are thumbs fingers and which episode of Lingthusiasm are you? — Survey results and a new personality quiz
  3. How we made vowel plots with Bethany Gardner
  4. Inner voice, mental pictures, and other shapes for thoughts
  5. Secret codes and the joy of cryptic word puzzles
  6. Linguistic mixups — spoonerisms, mondegreens, and eggcorns
  7. The best and worst comparatives episode
  8. Don’t you love to do a “do” episode?
  9. Behind the Scenes on the Tom Scott Language Files
  10. Xenolinguistics 👽
  11. Linguistic Travel – Estonia, Mundolingua, and Martha’s Vineyard
  12. Metaphors be with you! Lingthusiasm x Let’s Learn Everything crossover episode

Reading, listening, and other media

Selected social media posts

General linguistics

Fun moments

New favorite linguistic examples

Helpful threads and posts

Missed out on previous years? Here are the summary posts from 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020, 2021,2022, and 2023. If you’d like to get a much shorter quarterly highlights newsletter via email, with all sorts of interesting internet linguistics news and links, you can sign up for that at gretchenmcc.substack.com.

October, November, & December 2024: Lingthusiasm Makes the New York Times Word Nerd Top Five

leahvelleman

Lingthusiasm was featured in the New York Times’ list of 5 Podcasts for Word Nerds! And here’s print evidence that it happened. 

The show is often as much about social habits as it is about language — one memorable episode had Gawne and McCulloch discuss “lopsided conversations,” those verbal interactions that can go off the rails if one person is either dominating or not contributing enough. It’s a fascinating listen that will change the way you see everyday communications.

The rest of the list had four other indie linguisticsy/languagey podcasts whose creators we also know and like: The Allusionist, Words Unravelled, The Vocal Fries, and A Way With Words. Check them all out!

New York Times, September 29, 2024, page AR 15, “Now Listen Up, You Word Nerds,” by Emma Dibdin

Besides that, I ran a little accidental A/B test on how to market your pop linguistics book.

And I answered linguistics questions from Ella Hubber, Tom Lum, and Caroline Roper on an episode of their very fun pop science podcast Let’s Learn Everything. 

73: Linguist Gretchen McCulloch, Latin in Science, and Internet Linguistics

I also enrolled in my third American Sign Language class, ASL 103 with Deaf instructor Hariklia (Lia) Mavroudis, again through the Lethbridge Layton Mackay Rehabilitation Centre (LLMRC) in Montreal. Back in person again after 102 on Zoom, which was a huge relief. It’s also been fun this semester to start recognizing some people from previous classes and events! 

Lingthusiasm

Lingthusiasm put out the usual six episodes — including a bonus episode about my last summer’s travel and visits from Emily M. Bender and Let’s Learn Everything.

We also added linguist, technical editor, and generally excellent human Leah Velleman to the Lingthusiasm team! Her first project was sprucing up the Lingthusiasm merch page (check it out, it’s much easier to navigate now!), and you may also notice her around here helping me with these newsletters, for which I’m very grateful.

Remembering Bill Labov

The great sociolinguist Bill Labov passed away. The internet remembered him as it does, with eulogies and also silly jokes about his best-known study:

Or, for a serious (but still entertaining) look at why he was so great, listen to Lingthusiasm’s episode about the bunny paper. 

Favorite data

New weird utterances! Someone said these!

And several someones have already been saying these! To my great delight, they actually are or were common expressions.

A product label saying "Stay Fresh Cheese Bags." Above the text is a picture of sliced cheese.

Reading and listening

Here are some things I enjoyed this season:

Tweets and blog posts

This quarter’s image is a pumpkin I carved for Halloween. Featuring two shapes, a round, blobby one and an angular, spikey one. If you had to assign the names kiki and bouba to these shapes, which one would be which? 

Carved pumpkin with a rounded cloud shape on the left and a sharper star-like shape on the right with the text: One of the shapes on this pumpkin is called kiki and the other one is called boo-ba. Which is which?

August-September 2023: Etymology isn’t Destiny merch and an academic article about lingcomm

gretchenassistant

I joined onto a fun project this month, Zach Weinersmith of the webcomic Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal is running a Kickstarter for his book, The Universe: Abridged Beyond the Point of Usefulness, and one of the bonus rewards is an audiobook of his other book, Shakespeare’s Sonnets: Abridged Beyond the Point of Usefulenss. I’ll be the one reading the highly abridged sonnets, which I’m looking forward to!

I wrote down assorted thoughts about I think about framing a plenary talk, which began as a bluesky thread and I’ve now archived as a blog post.

The main episodes of Lingthusiasm were How kids learn Q’anjob’al and other Mayan languages – Interview with Pedro Mateo Pedro, in which we talk about expanding research on how children learn languages to a broader range of sociocultural settings, and Look, it’s deixis, an episode about pointing!, in which we talk about how pointing varies across societies and species (domestic dogs can understand a point, but wolves cannot), and how linguistic pointing relates to the eternal confusion about which Tuesday is next Tuesday.

The bonus episodes feature two names you might recognize from the end credits of Lingthusiasm episodes: How we make Lingthusiasm transcripts – Interview with Sarah Dopierala, in which we talk about how Sarah’s background in linguistics helps her with the technical words and phonetic transcriptions in Lingthusiasm episodes, her own research into converbs, and the linguistic tendencies that she’s noticed from years of transcribing Lauren and Gretchen (guess which of us uses more quotative speech!) and Field Notes on linguistic fieldwork – Interview with Martha Tsutsui Billins, in which we talk about the process of doing linguistic fieldwork and interviewing dozens of linguists about it for her own podcast, Field Notes.

We also announced new Lingthusiasm merch! We love reading up on an interesting etymology, but the history of a word doesn’t have to define how it’s used now – and to celebrate that we have new merch with the motto ‘Etymology isn’t Destiny’. Our artist, Lucy Maddox has brought these words to life in a beautiful design in black, white, navy blue, Lingthusiasm green, and rainbow gradient. The etymology isn’t destiny design is available on lots of different colours and styles of shirts, hoodies, tank tops, t-shirts: classic fit, relaxed fit, curved fit. Plus mugs, notebooks, stickers, water bottles, zippered pouches, and more!

Finally, Lauren Gawne and I published an academic article about Communicating about linguistics using lingcomm-driven evidence: Lingthusiasm podcast as a case study. It’s in Language and Linguistic Compass, an open access linguistics journal, and you can read it in full here. Here’s the abstract:

Communicating linguistics to broader audiences (lingcomm) can be achieved most effectively by drawing on insights from across the fields of linguistics, science communication (scicomm), pedagogy and psychology. In this article we provide an overview of work that examines lingcomm as a specific practice. We also give an overview of the Lingthusiasm podcast, and discuss four major ways that we incorporate effective communications methodologies from a range of literature in the production of episodes. First, we discuss how we frame topics and take a particular stance towards linguistic attitudes, second, we discuss how we introduce linguistic terminology and manage audience cognitive load, third, we discuss the role of metaphor in effective communication of abstract concepts, and fourth, we discuss the affective tools of humour and awe in connecting audiences with linguistic concepts. We also discuss a 2022 survey of Lingthusiasm listeners, which highlights how the audience responds to our design choices. In providing this summary, we also advocate for lingcomm as a theoretically-driven area of linguistic expertise, and a particularly effective forum for the application of linguistics.

Selected tweets on Twitter:

Selected bluesky tweets:

This month’s image is from the new Etymology isn’t Destiny merch, which I think looks so good in the rainbow gradient on a dark background! I’ve enjoyed seeing some people with it already in real life and here it is on a tote bag:

"Etymology isn't destiny" in swoopy rainbow gradient text on a black tote bag hanging from a wooden hook.

https://allthingslinguistic.com/post/725034554312753152

June-July 2023: Lingstitute and Merriam-Webster

gretchenassistant

In June and July, I headed to Lingstitute 2023, the LSA summer institute, at UMass Amherst. It was great to get to hang out with old friends and meet lots of new people

While I was in Massachusetts, I dropped by the headquarters of Merriam Webster to say hi to the dictionaries and lexicographers! (In that order.) Thanks especially to Peter Sokolowski for the guided tour and to Stacy Dickerman for the ride. Here are some photos I took on the tour, including many different eras of dictionary and the “linguistics” entry in the card catalogue:

The main episodes of Lingthusiasm were The verbs had been being helped by auxiliaries and Frogs, pears, and more staples from linguistics example sentences. The bonus episodes were Linguistic jobs beyond academia and a very silly special episode we called LingthusiASMR, in which we read a classic set of linguistics examples known as the Harvard Sentences in our most soothing, meditative voices (people have reported that it may not exactly induce the ASMR effect but it does indeed work to fall asleep to, and we’re still fans of the pun).

Selected tweets:

Blog posts:

This month’s photo is of the Lingthusiasm postcards featuring the circle IPA design that we printed out to give out at Lingstitute. People seemed to like the challenge of figuring out what features all of the circles stood for, and I gave away lots but still have some left, so if you see me at a future conference do feel free to ask for one so you can have a fun thing to stick up by your desk or on your fridge!

Left hand with rings holding blue cards with Lingthusiasm logo and green and white International Phonetic Alphabet.

May 2023: Spanish Because Internet, True Biz, and Word Magic

gretchenassistant

This month, I announced that there’s going to be a Spanish-language edition of Because Internet coming at some point in 2024! Spanish has been the translation that people have requested from me the most and I’m delighted that Álex Herrero and the other folks at Pie de Página are making it happen.

The main episode of Lingthusiasm was Word Magic, in which we discuss the linguistics of the magical systems in several recent fantasy novels we like, including Babel by R.F. Kuang, Carry On by Rainbow Rowell, and the Scholomance series by Naomi Novik, as well as the ways that you can change the state of the real world with words using the linguistic concept of performatives, such as agreeing to contracts, placing bets, and naming. The bonus episode was about reviewing the results of our 2022 listener survey, including answers to questions on whether knowing about the kiki/bouba effect as a meme influences your results on the kiki/bouba test, synesthesia, and whether people pluralize “emoji” as “emoji” or “emojis”.

People often ask Lingthusiasm to recommend interesting books about linguistics that don’t assume prior knowledge of linguistics, so we’ve come up with a list of 12 books that we personally recommend, including both nonfiction and fiction books with linguistically interesting elements! Get this list of our top 12 linguistics books by signing up for Lingthusiasm’s free email list (which will otherwise send you an email once a month when there’s a new episode — this is something we’re doing to help continue to reach people amid the rising fragmentation of the social media ecosystem).

The most recent of those books, which I read this month, was True Biz by Sara Novic and made a thread with some linguistically interesting snippets from it. Definitely recommend!

Finally reading @NovicSara's True Biz and greatly enjoying how it innovates with form to show ASL within the constraints of a print page mostly in English. You. Name, one set of pointer and middle fingers tapped twice on top of the other set. What, almost like the gesture, hands up and out like a shrug. Eyebrows again, down this time. You + name + what—eyebrows. (line drawing of person doing said signs on the page of a book) Here the alphabet did come in handy, and Charlie was grateful that she could at least spell her own name. Me name C-h-a-x-l-i-e, she said. The teacher shook his head, pointed to his own hand. C. He pointed to Charlie. C. H. A. R. Dammit. R, she copied. He gave her a thumbs up. Again, he said. Everyone waited, watching her. Me name C-h-a-r-l-i-e The teacher nodded and continued around the circle. Once everyone had a turn, he returned to the board and wrote, Deaf, Hearing, Son, Daughter, Brother, Sister, then pointed to each and signed its equivalent. (line drawings of signs) Her fellow students introduced themselves. Most of them were parents or relatives of younger River Valley kids. Me hearing. My son deaf.

Selected Tweets:

March-April 2023: Bluesky, Barbie bouba/kiki, and Bea Wolf

gretchenassistant

In April, I made an account on bluesky and enjoyed some wordplay there, which is still (so far) going strong as a twitter replacement.

The main episodes of Lingthusiasm these two months were Bringing stories to life in Auslan – Interview with Gabrielle Hodge, which was our second bimodal bilingual episode, this time in Auslan and English, as well as Tone and Intonation? Tone and Intonation!

The bonus episodes were When books speculate on the future of English and Neopronouns, gender-neutral vocab, and why linguistic gender even exists – Liveshow Q&A with Kirby Conrod.

I did a fun thread on Bea Wolf, Zach Weinersmith’s retelling of Beowulf as a kid’s graphic novel, analyzing how the alliterative metre works:

Selected tweets, while we’re still doing this thing, I guess:

Blog posts:

This month’s image is from the Barbie movie meme generator, but make it bouba/kiki.

Barbie meme generator with pink spikes shape and pink blobby shape and caption: this Barbie is bouba...or kiki.

February 2023: LingComm23 and liveshow

gretchenassistant

This month was the second International Conference on Linguistics Communication, #LingComm2023. I was extremely delighted to not be on the organizing committee this time and to get to participate in the excellent panels and posters and meetups organized by Laura Wagner and the rest of this year’s organizing committee. They did ask me to give the opening keynote, which I’ve posted the text of as a blog post. Here’s a little bit from it:

People who are readers read more than one book a year — and they read way more than one article. People who like podcasts listen to more than one podcast. People who like video subscribe to more than one account. People who like museums go to more than one museum. When I look at topics like pop history and pop science, god, they have SO MANY books and podcasts and scicomm accounts and museums and documentaries. This is my 30 year goal, that linguistics has a thriving ecosystem of so many ways that people can engage with it. 

Our competition isn’t each other, it’s all the other things people could be doing with their time and not even necessarily enjoying them. It’s doomscrolling, it’s aimlessly opening Netflix, it’s playing silly little games on your phone. 

The goal of doing lingcomm isn’t about ego, in trying to make one person into a celebrity. Frankly, I just think there are far more efficient ways of trying to become rich and famous. You know, have you considered making some weird food videos? Maybe having a weird looking pet and posting photos of it? I think those do pretty well. And like, I know we could all be getting more attention right now if we were willing to spout hot takes about how Insert Group Here are ruining language. We’re here because we’ve chosen not to do that. We’re here because we’ve chosen service to the harder path, the ethical path, the more rewarding path, of feeding people with language information that liberates them, that challenges them, rather than the easy path of stoking their insecurities and validating their prejudices. 

I hope that one of the things that the lingcomm conference becomes known for over the next 30 years is as a place to find collaborators to join you in this ethos of serving the public with lingcomm, whether that’s students excitedly hatching ideas with each other like I did in my friend’s car, or journalists and linguists connecting with each other to publish really great news stories, or more established projects finally meeting other people in their niche and thinking about how they could collaborate. 

What we can accomplish in 30 years of lingcomm: Opening keynote of #LingComm23

The main episode of Lingthusiasm was about How kids learn language in Singapore – Interview with Woon Fei Ting. The bonus episode was Singapore, New Zealand, and a favourite linguistics paper – 2023 Year Ahead Chat. We also did a liveshow through the Lingthusiasm patron Discord server about language and gender with special guest Dr. Kirby Conrod.

Selected tweets:

Blog posts:

Here’s my little Gather avatar standing at a booth containing a miniature Because Internet at #LingComm23!

Image of virtual Lingcomm booth for Gretchen McCulloch. Blue background that mimics carpet and a blue square with pixel chairs and table. Displays QR codes and Because Internet and an avatar of Gretchen.